


two steps

by daikonjou



Series: a curious case of the man with a unicorn's skull [3]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fight Club, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:36:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daikonjou/pseuds/daikonjou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Fight Club actually becomes a Thing and Ryouta Kise graduates from “innocent bystander” to “mixed into this mess.” Also Murakami references as quasi-pillow talk and about four different character cameos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two steps

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Andrea](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia) for reading it over and telling me how to fix my Kise voice early on in this thing, though unfortunately I have probably erred in somewhat similar fashion again later. She also gets the blame for enabling me, but this is sort of a permanent fixture of this series apparently.
> 
> as always, crossposted to [tumblr](http://aitsura.tumblr.com/post/51153887313/two-steps-kurobasu-fight-club-au-takao-midorima).

“Hit me,” Kazunari says, over a couple of last beers drunk while perched on concrete tire stoppers in the parking lot.

“What?”

“I’ll show you. So hit me.” Kazunari stands up, tottering just a tiny bit from all the beers he’d had earlier.

“You’re _crazy_ ,” Shintarou breathes.

Kazunari spreads his arms wide, laughs. “Maybe you’re just looking at this from a perspective that makes it look crazy,” he says, and closes his eyes. “Go on, hit me. Pick a spot. Don’t let me guess where.” His short black lashes fan out just the slightest bit when he has his eyes shut firmly like that.

It’s a little beautiful, Shintarou considers, startled, and winds up a left hook, launching it squarely into Kazunari’s smart (filthy, cocky, surprising) mouth.

Kazunari staggers back a couple of steps, rubs the new split with his thumb. Spits blood to the side. “Should’ve known you’d aim for my mouth, Shin-chan,” he says, grinning madly. His teeth are tinged reddish with blood mixed into his saliva. Then he darts in, sucker-punches Shintarou in the stomach.

Shintarou doubles over, fends off the next blow, aborts a headbutt at the last minute for some reason and gets whiplash for his trouble. Promptly forgets why he’d decided it wasn’t a good idea to headbutt Kazunari and does. His glasses make an ominous crunching sound; the frames get swept off when Kazunari lands a hit on his cheek and skitter away somewhere onto the dimly lit asphalt of the parking lot.

Despite his height and reach disadvantage ( _considerable_ height and reach disadvantage, come to think of it, Kazunari’s nearly a full seven and a half inches shorter than he is) Kazunari fights like a _demon_. He’s quick and breathtakingly flexible (the kind of flexibility that, had Shintarou not been in the middle of a fist fight, would have him achingly hard—actually, no, he’s hard anyway, just not for that particular reason) and he knows Shintarou’s weaknesses almost unfairly well.

At the end of the scuffle Shintarou finds himself lying on his back in the middle of the parking lot; Kazunari sits astride him admiring his newly split lip (positioned just right to match Kazunari’s, it looks like) and the cut over Shintarou’s cheekbone. “So,” he croons, leaning his face over Shintarou’s, close enough to brush their busted lips together with the slightest motion, “did you feel it?”

It takes some sorting through the impressions that slipped through the buzzing of adrenaline in his head, but shortly Shintarou nods—well, tries to nod, only to realize that Kazunari’s positioned much too close to do more than bump foreheads with him if he does. “Yeah,” he says, feeling the sting of his bloodied mouth as it presses against Kazunari’s. He can almost make out Kazunari’s sharp grey eyes well enough to see just how predatorily they gleam.

Then Kazunari’s climbing off of him, brushing himself off. “Evening, fellas,” he says, airily, to a couple of guys who’d heard the commotion and come to watch. “Wanna brawl?”

Shintarou closes his eyes wearily for a little bit, then pushes himself to his feet.

*

“The first rule of fight club,” Kazunari says, rolling the syllables carefully over his tongue, “is that you don’t talk about fight club.” He looks around, stops to pierce a couple members with his grey stare. Shintarou shivers a little involuntarily. “The second rule is: _you don’t talk about fight club_.”

Kazunari has a way with words, a _forcefulness_ in his speeches that make the crowd of attendees roar. Their blood’s running hot. Shirts are shed, shoes are kicked off. A purple-haired giant steps into the ring, says, “Sorry, Muro-chin,” to the tallish Nisei-looking kid standing across from him.

“Gimme all you got, Atsushi,” the kid laughs, and charges at the guy who’d called him Muro-chin, quick and sure on his bare feet. Some of the guys shout when the kid lands the first blow, and the second. Then Atsushi lands a hit that throws the kid back into the wall of spectators, right on the beauty mark under the kid’s eye.

Today, there’s a familiar blond head in the crowd. Ryouta Kise stands there with his model-pretty face and his single hoop earring.

“What are you doing here?” Shintarou says, because fight club was the last place he expected to see his boss’ secretary.

Ryouta shrugs. “Got bored and curious, so I followed you in. Sorry, Midorimacchi. You’ve been busy lately, though. I see this is where you’ve been getting your souvenirs.” He gestures to his eye, in reference to the shiner Shintarou wore to work pretty much the entire week prior.

“If it’s your first time, you have to fight,” Shintarou repeats. It’s a pale imitation of the heat in Kazunari’s voice when he says it.

“I heard, I heard,” Ryouta says airily, and unbuttons his shirt. He kicks off his cheap loafers, peels off his socks and stuffs them into his shoes. “Wanna go a round?”

“Hmph,” Shintarou says. Then, “I won’t go easy on you.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Ryouta fires back, cracking his knuckles.

In the ring, Atsushi crouches down next to his bruised and slightly bloody insensate friend and picks him up easily. “I’m taking Muro-chin home,” he announces. The crowd parts for him, closes ranks behind him. Nobody says anything until he’s up the stairs and the basement door closes behind him—then the roar starts up again.

“Who’s next?” somebody howls.

“Me!” Ryouta calls out, and strolls into the ring.

“Hey, pretty boy, hope you’re not gonna need your face for a while!” another guy jeers.

Kazunari grins lazily from his spot leaning against the concrete wall. “We’ll see if the newbie can fight, eh?”

“Kick his ass!” somebody yells. Shintarou steps into the ring, drops into a crouch. He doesn’t take his eyes off Ryouta, not for a second.

For a secretary, Ryouta hurtles in fast and hard. His punches are brutal, surprisingly so when the most Shintarou has ever particularly noticed him do is carry coffee and paperwork, and the odd times when their boss makes use of Ryouta’s typing speed. One punch cracks the right lens of Shintarou’s spare glasses, and he only wears them in fights because it’s not worth the handicap he’d take for not being able to see more than the vague blur of a moving fist. Shintarou folds himself up and slips under another punch, jabs a fist into Ryouta’s gut harder than strictly necessary. He doesn’t get out of the way fast enough to evade a third swing, which thuds into his left temple and leaves him seeing stars. Well-aimed, for someone bent in half and clutching his stomach with one arm.

The ground tilts out from under Shintarou’s feet, and Ryouta nails him with a punch under his chin. It feels a little like flying, in a sickening, dizzy kind of way; Shintarou flails out blindly and impacts something soft. The last thing he hears before everything goes black around him is Ryouta’s curiously soft whimper.

Shintarou wakes up fuzzily in stages what feels like a bare instant later, flat on his back on the dirt floor considerably closer to the wall than he remembered being. Next to him, Ryouta’s on his hands and knees hunched over the drain set into a bit of concrete flooring poking out from the wall—correction, one hand and knees, other hand cupped miserably between his legs—puking up whatever he’d been drinking at the bar before he’d followed Shintarou into the basement.

“ _Nnnngh_ ,” Ryouta moans, far less coherent than he ever was at the office. “Jesus, Midorimacchi, did you have to hit me in the— _uugh_ —” He cuts himself off to retch again.

Straightening his glasses, Shintarou pushes himself to his feet and takes a few steps away from the potential splatter zone (which was admittedly tiny, thanks to the drain). He has to squint a little to get Ryouta to come into proper focus, which suggests he’s concussed but could just be a side effect of wearing his spare glasses after his pair with the proper prescription got smashed in that first fight with Kazunari. After two steps he has to put a hand on the wall to steady himself. “I wasn’t deliberately aiming to hit you there, no,” he says, sucking in a breath against the sudden sway of the ground under his feet. The air stinks of sweat and musk and blood, tinged sharply this close to the drain with the stench of alcohol and bile.

“ _Ow_ ,” Ryouta says, eloquently. “Couldn’t you have done something _normal_ and given me a shiner to wear to work?”

“Shut up, Ryouta,” Shintarou says. “You followed me here.”

“ _Jesus_. I thought maybe you’d gotten mixed up in some trouble. I didn’t expect—” Ryouta sits back on his haunches and waves the hand not protectively cupping his crotch vaguely in the air, as if that was specific at all “— _this_. I didn’t think you were the kind of guy who went straight for the nads. I thought we were _friends_.”

“’I told you,” Shintarou says, irritated, “I didn’t aim for them specifically. It’s difficult to aim at all when you’re a split-second from passing out from whiplash. And since when were we friends?”

“You’re so mean to me, Midorimacchi.” Ryouta pouts, without an ounce of self-consciousness about using such an expression. It doesn’t have the raw edge Kazunari’s rare instances of childish emoting does. “Since the day we went for lunch together, remember? We talked about Calcutecs and shuffling the world. It was really interesting stuff. Usually you don’t say much to me besides asking if I don’t have work I should be doing.”

Shintarou thought about all the times he’d seen and spoken to Ryouta. They’d never exchanged more than a few lines, and Ryouta had always spoken more than he had. Lunch was pulling up a blank. He frowns. “I don’t remember that.”

Ryouta’s pout gains a trembly lower lip. “So cold, Midorimacchi! No wonder you could hit a guy in the nuts without flinching!”

“Do you want an apology?” Shintarou grits out. “Is that why you keep bringing that up?”

Ryouta grins. The sudden reversal throws Shintarou for a moment. “No, not really. I’m curious, though, where’ve you been staying since your old place blew up? Nobody’s really seen you around any of the hotels, so it’s not like you’re staying there, and Kurokocchi says he hasn’t heard anything about an increase in vagrants, so it’s not like you’re sleeping on the street.”

“I assure you, my living arrangements are under control,” Shintarou says, as frostily as he can manage when his left temple is beginning to throb.

“If you tell me, I’ll call it even,” Ryouta says.

*

“You might as well just show him,” Kazunari says, as the night wears on. The skin over his knuckles is broken from his fight with Atsushi, after the guy came back in for his and “Muro-chin’s” shirts and shoes. The height difference had been almost comical—Kazunari wasn’t short, by all means, but Atsushi towered over him. David and Goliath, if David had been a spitfire and Goliath half-hearted to the point of indolence over the fight.

“We’ll never get rid of him if I do,” Shintarou retorts. “Ryouta’s nosy and a gossip.” His own knuckles sting. Probably from punching Ryouta earlier. He remembers from some idle chatter that Ryouta regularly hit a gym up for one (apparently particularly brutal) trainer who was, as Ryouta put it, “a cutie in knee-high leg slips until he starts kicking you.”

“And?” Kazunari leers in the blond’s direction. Something like _jealousy_ coils in the pit of Shintarou’s stomach, which is frankly absurd given that he’d only met the man… what, a month ago? Four weeks ago? (There are no clocks in Kazunari’s abode, and nothing resembling a calendar to speak of. Shintarou tracks time with his phone and a watch that keeps changing to different time zones, the former only useful when charged and the latter with little use whatsoever when the requisite mental math is always different.)

Ryouta Kise seems completely unaware of Kazunari’s attention on him, folded into the roaring, heckling crowd as a dark-skinned man with hair such a deep blue it’s nearly black and a paler, shorter man with equally pale aqua blue hair circle each other, test each other. The shorter of the pair takes a step forward, a step back. Ryouta watches them exchange blows with an extraordinarily feral, _interested_ look in his eyes, like he’s analyzing the way they move and picking it apart, finding openings, learning their motions. He’s wound tight, as if he were in the ring himself, and seems to have forgotten all about the small wounds he incurred in his own fight. Small wonder Kazunari’s staring at him, Shintarou thinks.

“Bring him home,” Kazunari says, flicking his tongue out over his lips to wet them. The gesture borders on obscene next to the intensity of his gaze, directed somewhere that isn’t Shintarou. “Let him see, if he’s so curious.”

Shintarou swallows unhappily and nods.

The smile Kazunari rewards him with is jagged and sharp, and Shintarou almost reaches out to him to kiss him just to see if he’ll cut his mouth on the edges.

*

He jolts to his senses at three in the morning to the sound of Ryouta screaming. For a moment, Shintarou thinks he’s being _murdered_ , and seeks about him appropriately for something he might use to stop that (frivolous and flighty as Ryouta seems, it would only pile up inconvenience upon inconvenience if he were to simply stand by and let Ryouta be killed, and there was the small detail of such a thing making him accomplice to the crime). Then he realizes that Ryouta’s voice wasn’t raised in _pain_ , per se. Shintarou frowns.

“Aaah, ah, yes, _yes_!” Ryouta moans, shameless and loud and totally obscene. The dull thumping noise rhythmically accompanying his cries could, in fact, be the knocking of Kazunari’s headboard against the wall. A particularly hard thrust knocks it harder into the plaster, if the volume of the next thud is to be trusted.

Shintarou groans and buries his face in his pillow. He’s never going to be able to look Ryouta in the face ever again. “Ryota Kise’s Sex Noises” was not a category of knowledge he’d ever had any real desire or interest in having, but there was the proof at three in the morning that Ryouta was a screamer and also that three AM was not in any way a decent hour to be fucking or waking other people up with said fucking.

“Aaah! Ah, yeah, fuck me!” Ryouta practically _yells_ , and then Kazunari seems to have stopped his mouth somehow because everything after that is muffled in a way that suggests tongue or fingers, or maybe an improvised gag.

This hadn’t at all been in his plans, Shintarou thinks, and drifts off musing sourly to himself that at least Ryouta could no longer corner him with questions about his living space. Also, he’ll be very sore in the morning, probably.

*

“Morning, Midorimacchi,” Ryouta says, walking into the kitchen with a pronounced limp. (Sore enough to tell, but not so much that he can’t get out of bed. At least Kazunari has some modicum of self-restraint, even if he seems to delight in his alarmingly impulsive nature. That particular train of thought makes something _twist_ in Shintarou’s chest, and he quickly abandons it.) “You’re up early. Did you sleep at all?” He hasn’t bothered to put on his shirt, at that; his neck and shoulders are littered with hickies and his right collarbone is basically one big bruise of bitemarks. Kazunari really did a number on him.

“Not much, no thanks to you,” Shintarou grouses. Ryouta smiles sheepishly.

“Sorry about that. It’s been a while, that’s all. It was really good, though!”

“That’s not something I really needed to hear,” Shintarou snaps.

Ryouta blinks. “Midorimacchi—”

“Don’t just walk around like that, go get dressed. You look like someone tried to _eat_ you.”

“So much for thinking you’d be a little sweeter,” Ryouta complains. “You’ve got no sense of romance, Midorimacchi!” He pads off back to Kazunari’s room, presumably to collect his shirt.

Almost as soon as Ryouta’s left the kitchen, Kazunari comes up the basement stairs. “He’s still here, huh?”

“What is going on?” Shintarou demands. “You said bring him home, but you didn’t say you’d be _sleeping_ with him!”

Kazunari shrugs. “He’s an okay fuck. Noisy, but kind of fun I guess.”

“You guess.”

“Get rid of him for me, Shin-chan,” Kazunari says.

“Why is it _my_ problem—”

“Oh, and don’t talk to him about me,” Kazunari adds, sharp edges on his smile.

“ _Kazunari_ —”

“Better do it soon, Shin-chan! Or you’ll both be late for work. You could always quit, of course.”

“Fuck you,” Shintarou growls, and climbs the creaky, half-rotted stairs to find Ryouta.

—

“Midorimacchi?” Ryouta asks. He’s dressed properly at this stage, although the collar of his shirt does nothing to hide the state of his neck.

Shintarou wrinkles his nose a little. “You should go home now,” he says.

“Huh? Midorimacchi, we’re not going to work together? I was going to buy you breakfast.”

“Go home and get cleaned up,” Shintarou says. “You look disgraceful.”

“You’re really charming the morning after, Midorimacchi,” Ryouta mutters, dry.

“Just _go_ ,” Shintarou says.

“Jeez! If anyone asks, I’ll be sure to tell them that no, fucking Midorimacchi doesn’t improve his temper at all,” Ryouta snaps right back.

“When the hell did you _sleep_ with me, anyway?” _You were fucking Kazunari last night, not me_ , Shintarou nearly says, but manages to hold his tongue.

Ryouta throws his hands up, seeming disgusted. “Really, Midorima? _That’s_ what you’re going to say? If you think I suck in bed just say something next time instead of doing this weird passive-aggressive… _thing_!” He pats himself down, presumably to check for his wallet and keys, and snatches up his cell phone before stalking out.

Shintarou gingerly takes the stairs back down to the ground floor and heads to the kitchen for at least a cup of coffee before he has to go sit in a cubicle doing calculations for horrifying reports he’s by now totally numb to, all while Ryouta glares at him across the office. He nearly walks straight into Kazunari, who has the gall to _laugh_. “What the hell is going on, Kazunari?” he demands, because nothing Ryouta had been suggesting makes _any sense at all_.

“Maybe he got laid so hard last night his brains got scrambled a little,” Kazunari suggests, and snickers. “What’s the matter, Shin-chan? Not going to work?”

“You can’t just go around fucking my coworkers, Kazunari,” Shintarou says.

“And why not? Don’t tell me you’ve never checked him out.” Kazunari smiles, sharp. Predatory. “Not the way he looks at you.”

“How would you know that?”

“He was doing it last night too, Shin-chan. You’re still here listening to me, aren’t you? What’s the matter, jealous?”

“… No,” Shintarou says, but it doesn’t sound convincing at all.

“Come here, then,” Kazunari purrs, and tugs him down to bite at his mouth. The skin of Shintarou’s lip breaks under Kazunari’s teeth.

Kazunari smears it around Shintarou’s mouth with his lips and tongue, and pulls back when Shintarou’s wearing a coat of blood like perverse lipstick. “There, you’re all prettied up now. Is that what you wanted, Shin-chan?”

“Are you always this… promiscuous?” Shintarou says, trying valiantly to ignore the shuddering of want running through him. His lip stings when he tries to lick the blood off on reflex..

“Promiscuous?” Kazunari barks out a laugh. “Ha! Is that what you’re going to call this? Wouldn’t that make you equally slutty? Not that I don’t like the idea of a slutty Shin-chan. Say,” he breathes, hands not-quite touching the back of Shintarou’s neck, “didn’t you have to leave for work ten minutes ago?”

“Kazunari,” Shintarou says, and swallows. The fine hairs at his nape prickle.

“Better get going, Shin-chan.”

“Wait,” Shintarou says.

“Oh?” Kazunari’s mouth curls into a lazy grin. “What’s the matter, Shin-chan?”

“I want to touch you,” Shintarou blurts, then claps his hands over his mouth. He hits the bite too hard and winces.

“Hahaha!” Kazunari tosses his head back and laughs lustily until he collapses the other way and bends forward clutching his stomach instead. “Shin-chan, I’m surprised at you,” he says, once he’s finally stopped laughing.

“Shut up,” Shintarou says. “Forget I said anything!”

“Now, now, Shin-chan, you can’t take that back once you’ve said it! I didn’t think you’d be the type to skip work for a roll in the hay, though. You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“I’m leaving now!” Shintarou snaps, but doesn’t move at all.

“You have to actually walk away for that to seem like a threat, Shin-chan,” Kazunari purrs. “Do you want to touch me? Or is it that you want me to touch _you_?”

“Kazunari—”

“Why don’t you skip work today?” Kazunari says, tilting Shintarou’s chin down between his thumb and forefinger. “Show me how you want to be touched, Shin-chan.”

A shudder runs down Shintarou’s spine. “Yes,” he says, leaning down to meet Kazunari’s biting, sharp kiss.

*

_I called you in sick today when you didn’t show, Midorimacchi_ , says the text message on Shintarou’s phone. _It’s not like you to miss work_.

Shintarou ignores the buzzing of the phone tucked in the pocket of his discarded pants, kneeling naked on a towel in front of the full-length mirror Kazunari dusted off for him. “Go on, Shin-chan,” Kazunari murmurs with his filthy tongue, “show me.”

_I’m sorry if I pressured you into something last night. You seemed to enjoy it, but I didn’t ask first. Guess that’s where I went wrong._

“Secretly, you love to show off, don’t you Shin-chan?” Kazunari says. He stands behind Shintarou, leans down to ghost his breath over the shell of Shintarou’s ear. “Look how hard you are.”

“No,” Shintarou says. His denial sounds soft and feeble against the arousal building in his belly, a denial for form’s sake.

“I want to watch you cum,” Kazunari whispers, lips against Shintarou’s ear. “I want to see you wrecked, fucked out. Show me what you look like when you have nothing left in you, Shin-chan.”

“ _Kazunari_ —”

“If you really don’t want to, then get up and get dressed,” Kazunari says. “But if you _do_ want it, then touch yourself,” he adds.

_There’s something I was wondering, Midorimacchi—_

Slowly, slowly, Shintarou closes his fingers around his length, strokes himself awkwardly. It’s different, when there’s a mirror in front of him. Different, when Kazunari’s watching.

“You’re supposed to watch yourself, Shin-chan,” Kazunari purrs, and tilts Shintarou’s chin so he has no choice but to watch his reflection, watch the obscene slide of his hand fisted around his cock.

“Ah!”

“Ah ah ah, don’t look away now Shin-chan, you’ve just gotten to the good part.” Kazunari releases Shintarou’s chin, reaching down to pinch at one of Shintarou’s nipples.

Shintarou gasps, jerks, rhythm thrown off. “Kazunari—”

“See?” Kazunari whispers. “Just look at yourself. You’re so pretty when you lose control, Shin-chan. So pretty. I want to smash you into pieces to see how the light glitters on them.”

“Aah, ah!” Kazunari’s fingers slip into Shintarou’s mouth, and he sucks on them greedily. “Mmph!”

“Good boy,” Kazunari says. He tugs his saliva-slicked fingers out of Shintarou’s mouth, reaches down to open Shintarou up.

“ _Kazunari_ ,” Shintarou gasps.

“Relax a little for me, will you Shin-chan?”

“Kazunari, _please_ —”

“You’re so pretty, Shin-chan,” Kazunari says. He pushes in another finger. “You’re such a pretty little slut.”

The stretch and burn of Kazunari’s fingers inside him is almost too much. Shintarou can hardly breathe, caught somewhere between pleasure and pain; his reflection parts bloody lips to pant wantonly, knees spreading and back arching.

“Go on, then,” Kazunari whispers, lips ghosting over Shintarou’s ear. “Don’t make me do all the work. I want to see you fuck yourself on my fingers.”

Shintarou raises his hips, infrequently used muscles in his thighs burning with the effort, and lowers himself again, feeling Kazunari’s fingers moving in and out of him. The mirror shows him the sharp, cruel smile gashing Kazunari’s face. He does it again and again, until the slide of two fingers in and out of his ass stops feeling strange and starts feeling a little frustrating. Wasn’t there more—?

“Good boy,” Kazunari says. “Here’s your reward.” His fingers crook, spread, seeking something—

“ _Fuck_ ,” Shintarou nearly sobs. He knows what a prostate is, but he hadn’t realized it was so sensitive. “Kazunari, please, not so—”

“Your hand’s not moving, Shin-chan,” Kazunari says, and reaches in front to close his fingers over Shintarou’s hand and cock. “Come for me.”

One stroke, two, three, and Shintarou folds forward, shaking from the force of his orgasm. White spatters over the mirror’s surface; Shintarou sags, spent.

Kazunari tugs his fingers out of Shintarou’s body, wipes them off with a corner of Shintarou’s discarded undershirt. “What kind of old dreams would the Dreamreader see in your skull?” he says, tilting up Shintarou’s chin with his clean hand. “Would you miss your shadow if it was sent to die in the woods at the end of the world?”

“I’m not a golden beast,” Shintarou breathes. “I’m not a Calcutec either. And I’m not fond of jazz.” His body feels heavy, sluggish with the desire to sleep.

“You’re not, huh?” There’s a distinct note of laughter in Kazunari’s voice. “So tell me what you do like then, Mr. Wind-up Bird.”

Shintarou means to say _watching the daily horoscope program_ , or _finding the perfect lucky item_ , or even just _a bath, a drink, a good night’s sleep_. “You,” he says instead. “I like you, Kazunari.”

Kazunari tilts his head back and laughs.

_There’s something I was wondering, Midorimacchi—why was everyone calling you Kazu?_

*

When Shintarou finally dresses and digs his phone out of his pocket, Ryouta’s sent him about six text messages.

He deletes all of them and turns the phone off.


End file.
